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eggboard writes "Henk Rogers was a Dutchman who arrived in Japan in the 1980s following a girlfriend (later, his wife). An inveterate D&D player, he became enthralled with the NEC-8801, and nearly killed himself trying to create a D&D-like world that he released as The Black Onyx. No one initially knew what to make of it, and the game sold slowly at first. Through savvy pricing, packaging, and press attention, sales grew, and the game jumpstarted RPGs in Japan. Rogers got left behind, though, as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy hit a local nerve better than his efforts. 'I also realized that I didn't quite understand the Japanese aesthetic and way. These games were quite different to mine, and just struck a more effective cultural chord.' Rogers went on to license Tetris to Nintendo, though, so he did just fine."

"Rogers went on to license Tetris to Nintendo, though, so he did just fine." That's the most interesting part of the story - how the best video game product of communism got sidelined into the capitalist computer paradigm.

Black Onyx III was never finished. Then in 1988, Rogers, who had left programming to hunt for successful foreign games to bring to Japan, encountered a game called Tetris at a Las Vegas computer show. Rogers arranged a license from the Soviet Union government, which he sold to Nintendo. Tetrisâ(TM)s success forever changed the course of his life.

Rogers discovered Tetris during a Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas in 1988. At the time, the game was being distributed in several countries under a master license agreement which the original licensee had not honored. Rogers went to Moscow (without an invitation) to see if he could obtain rights to distribute the game. Two other companies were simultaneously bidding for the same rights. Rogers brought Nintendo on board and secured the exclusive rights to market Tetris on video game consoles. Nintendo successfully used this grant to squeeze its rival Atari out of the market, as Atari had sought to market Tetris based on the original (invalid) license.

During the negotiations in Moscow, Rogers also became friends with the game's Russian author Alexey Pajitnov. In 1990, he helped Pajitnov move to the United States and set up a new company, AnimaTek, to develop new computer graphic technologies.

"Rogers went on to license Tetris to Nintendo, though, so he did just fine." That's the most interesting part of the story - how the best video game product of communism got sidelined into the capitalist computer paradigm.

That's a very odd way to put it. Most of us would never have heard of Tetris if it hadn't been "sidelined." It's not as if the Soviets were exporting copies of Tetris all over the world to support the global struggle against oppressive capitalism. Also, the use of the word "best" implies there was some competition. Can you name any other "video game product of communism?"

JRPG are what is wrong with videogames now and then. The player basically grinds and grinds and grinds to his death.

This is a cultural difference, Japanese developers believe gamers want to work for / earn their fun rather than be given it easily. Western audiences generally disagree but the games are popular in Japan.

And from time to time he engages in turn based battles.

Western RPGs were turn based first. All RPGs originated from the table top equivalent (e.g. D&D). Western RPGs like Ultima were turn based until pretty far into their run. There's also the Zelda RPGs which use real-time battles but are Japanese, the first one of those was around 1990 which was before mo

This is a cultural difference, Japanese developers believe gamers want to work for / earn their fun rather than be given it easily. Western audiences generally disagree but the games are popular in Japan.

Huh? JRPGs were actually quite popular during the mid-90s up until about the previous console generation. If you look at the top grossing video games of all time [wikia.com] you see that there are quite a few JRPGs on the list, and it certainly wasn't only Japan that was buying them. But take a closer look at the

Grinding and turn based battles are what RPGs were originally all about. It was JRPGs which first pushed towards strong narrative.Western developers/publishers almost completely lost interest in RPGs after the early nineties, and only recently have they made a comeback. Even so, the JRPG market is far bigger and more diverse than "Western" RPGs have been at any point in their history.

There was an episode where Robert Picardo's holographic Doctor introduces an entire planet to music. He becomes a celebrated singer, and even attempts to stay on the planet, but finds out at the end that the "music" that the aliens ultimately enjoy turns out to be far different. He starts a musical revolution, but is "left behind" at the end.

Admittedly this seems to have derived from a quote from the guy himself. Wizardry was mentioned, but with no acknowledgement that it was in Japan. On the other hand, I can't quickly find any dates on when Wizardry hit Japan, other than it had a mediocre translation.

“Next I looked at what kind of games were doing well in Japan,” he says. “It was immediately obvious to me that the core difference between the two markets was that there were no computer role-playing games in Japan. The US had Ultima and Wizardry. But there were no such adventures in Japan. I thought, I could do that.”

Perhaps part of the problem was that his lack of understanding the language made it harder to see what was already there. A quick look at that blog implies that a lot of those came out in 1983, so it was already starting to happen at the same ti

The first Dragon Quest team went on the record praising Black Onyx as the influence for them investigating other western titles in the genre (specifically Wizardry). And so the RPG hacked and slashed its way into the Japanese videogame industry and consciousness.

The Dragon Quest team themselves credit The Black Onyx with causing them to investigate RPG titles like the earlier Wizardry, which is the reason why Dragon Quest even exists today. Just because Wizardry existed first doesn't mean that it had some universal impact throughout Japan.

I think the reference to BO in this particular article is relevant. It also mentions the edge-online article. http://blog.hardcoregaming101.... [hardcoregaming101.net]

I'm getting a strong feeling of all these things happening at the same time. BO had a few innovations (apparently pioneering the health bar), but it was no genesis of JRPG on its own. Also, BO was (IIRC) a 3D-maze-view game like Wizardry, while JRPGs generally went the Ultima way with a top-down map view, though I remember that Phantasy Star I had a top-down overwor

I suppose you mean this to indicate that Wizardry predates his work, so Black Onyx is not first computer RPG. Nobody claims that - if you would read TFA:It was immediately obvious to me that the core difference between the two markets was that there were no computer role-playing games in Japan. The US had Ultima and Wizardry. But there were no such adventures in Japan. I thought, I could do that.

Henk Rogers is one of the co-founders of The Tetris Company LLC, a company which asserts -- and has successfully defended -- copyrights over any and all video games involving falling n-ominoes. So if you ever wrote a Tetris clone, you owe him royalties.